


The Emissaries

by the_alchemist



Category: Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare, The Borgias (2011)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 22:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2827745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a century, the Pope sends a pair of emissaries to the Court of Faerie. Oberon and Titania are pleasantly surprised when instead of a pair of dusty old priests, they get Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia. Mischief and matchmaking ensue ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Emissaries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamiflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/gifts).



Of all the events in the Faerie social calendar, the least eagerly anticipated was the once-a-century visit from the papal emissaries.

It was always a pair of dusty old men – whether the same ones or different, Titania would not have been able to tell, save for what she knew of human lifespans. The only person who looked forward to the visit at all was the Puck, who found them amusing to torment.

The King and Queen rode out hawking on the day they was due to arrive, for although they had to receive their guests, they did not want to spend more time with the than necessary. As they neared the borders of Faerie, the Queen spied a trio of humans riding in their direction: a comely youth and a beautiful maiden, followed by another man. Calling to her husband, she suggested they retreat into a thicket, to see whether there was any sport to be had.

 

‘You do realise, don’t you,’ said the dark-haired youth, ‘that fairies aren’t real?’

The golden-haired maiden laughed a rather musical little laugh. ‘You’re so prosaic, Cesare! And you saw the scrolls. Once a century, since the days of Pope Sylvester II, the Vatican has sent emissaries to the Court of Faerie, “to renew divers treaties and to invite the fairy folk to seek shelter in the bosom of Mother Church.” We need to at least try!’

The youth – Cesare – harrumphed.

‘In any case,’ said the maiden, ‘surely it is pleasant to ride out on a spring day with a comely companion.’

‘Sisters don’t count as comely companions, Lucrezia,’ said Cesare.

He had hoped to make her blush, but instead she laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m not say I wouldn’t have preferred a handsome young lord who might invite me to ... sit with him awhile in a secluded glade. But you’re good enough as a second choice.’

 

Queen Titania clapped her hands. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘They’re lovely.’

King Oberon touched her knee. ‘Shall we keep them?’ he said. ‘They would make delightful ornaments for the court!’

‘Delightful ornaments for your bed, more like,’ said the Queen.

‘As though you wouldn’t want them in yours,’ said the King. ‘But no, I didn’t mean that. We could keep them in a golden cage, and bring them out to entertain us at festivals.’

 

‘I am not,’ said Cesare, ‘knocking at a cottage door and asking the way to Fairyland. I do not wish to be taken for a madman and locked up.’

‘Well I will then,’ said Lucrezia, and gracefully dismounted.

‘Lucrezia,’ Cesare shouted. ‘Lucrezia!’ Then he sighed and said to the third human: ‘Micheletto, we’d better go with her.’

Both of them dismounted and made their way to the cottage, the one called Micheletto leading the horses.

‘... why certainly,’ the wizened old woman at the door was saying. ‘Come this way, my dear.’

‘Lucrezia!’ Cesare hissed. But she ignored him, so he tied the horses up at the gate, and with his hand on the hilt of his dagger, followed her inside.

Inside, it turned out, meant something a lot more like outside. More outside than he’d ever been before. In front of them stretched a flowery meadow, dotted with woodland glades and bright pavilions. In the distance there was a ivory-covered castle, covered with turrets and – Cesare noted – ridiculously impossible to defend.

But then a dozen or so girls, wearing nothing but gauzy shifts, ran up to him. One of them started undoing his doublet, another kissing his legs, then pulling down his stockings. He glanced behind him, and saw that Micheletto too had his hand on his sword. Instead of holding three horses, he was holding three unicorns, and scowling, as a little crowd of – yes, those things were certainly satyrs and fauns – frolicked around him.

He found he was laughing, and it was as much from joy as from the ridiculousness of it.

Lucrezia had been crowned with flowers, and was running in the direction of the biggest pavilion, racing her own little coterie of fauns and youths. Naked youths, or nearly so. He couldn’t tell whether it was from delight or from a brotherly protectiveness that he ran after her, accompanied, of course, by the girls, who giggled and tried to stick flowers in his hair as he ran.

Bursting into the pavilion, both of them felt a little foolish. It was unmistakably a royal court, with a king and queen raised up on golden thrones. The courtiers were all formally dressed in the brightest of colours, and they – Lucrezia and Cesare, papal emissaries – found they were half naked.

Lucrezia found her tongue before her brother did. ‘Your Majesties,’ she said, curtseying low. ‘We bring to you greetings and good will from our father his Holiness Pope Alexander II, and his sincerest wishes for another century of peace between our people and yours.

Titania dismounted her throne, and made her way towards Lucrezia, the emerald train of her dress snaking endlessly out behind her. ‘The Court of Faerie bids you welcome,’ she said, and invites you to eat with us, drink with us, make merry with us.’

 

‘Creatures as beautiful as that should be allowed to run free,’ said Titania, reclining naked in her bower.

Her royal husband kissed her cheek, then her neck, then her chest. ‘You are growing sentimental, my love,’ he said. ‘But your will be done.’

She pouted. ‘I do wish they would kiss each other though. They are both so lovely! Why will they not kiss?’

Oberon, who was something of a scholar of the ways of humans, knew the answer to that. ‘They are brother and sister,’ he said.

‘What does that mean?’

‘They hatched out of the same clutch of eggs,’ he said.

Titania frowned. ‘What has that to do with anything?’

‘That means they will not kiss,’ said Oberon.

‘But that’s _stupid_ ,’ said his Queen.

A little voice, little enough that someone less shrewd than the King or Queen of Faerie might have mistaken it for a voice in their own head, spoke from beneath. ‘Stupid,’ it said, ‘but not difficult to fix.’

Titania reached under the bed and dragged out the Puck by its gnarled little ear. ‘Get out!’ she said.

Oberon was smiling broadly as his Queen kicked the thing away from them. ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘it does have a point.’

 

They walked out of the cottage door hand in hand. The sun was shining, it was a bright spring day. Nothing had changed. And everything had changed.

Lucrezia _smelled_ different, that was the way Cesare thought of it. She looked the same, her voice still held the same music, but her body’s sweet perfume now incited him to every kind of love imaginable, and every way of expressing that love.

‘Now I understand,’ is what Lucrezia told herself. ‘I was a girl, and now I am a woman, and now I have learned how to love Cesare, how to be loved by him.’

So wrapped up were they in each others’ eyes and smiles, and yes, already, each others’ kisses that they got half a mile before remembering Micheletto. They turned to go back, but saw him coming towards them, riding his horse and leading the other two (now, to Lucrezia’s disappointment, no longer unicorns.) He would not be drawn on what he had been doing while the two of them were feasting with the court. But he was smiling, which Lucrezia thought was quite the strangest thing that had happened all day.


End file.
